Flowers on Main (41 page)

Jess grinned. “An intriguing concept. A little kinky, but I like it.”

“This is so not amusing,” Bree told her as she turned to head off Marty.

“Isn’t that your friend up there on the ladder?” Marty asked, looking down his supercilious nose. “Please tell me you are not serious about someone who does…” He hesitated. “Well, whatever it is that he does.”

“He owns a very successful nursery and landscaping company,” she said tightly. “Why are you still here?”

“To persuade you to rethink your decision, of course.” He tucked her arm through his and steered her toward the front door of the inn. “We’ll have tea and some of your sister’s fabulous scones and discuss my offer again. I’m sure I can convince you that you belong back in Chicago.”

Bree stopped in her tracks and stood her ground. She was not going to succumb to Marty’s charm for the second time in her life. Nor was she going inside to chat with this man over tea and scones.

“Marty, you couldn’t talk me into changing my mind if you offered the sun, the moon and the stars,” she said flatly. “I will never work for you again.”

“
With
me,” he corrected. “You’d be working with me, not for me.”

“As if,” she retorted. “Your ego doesn’t allow you to work with anyone. You have to be the boss.”

“I am more experienced,” he said. “You used to appreciate that. In fact, you used to hang on my every word.”

“And then I wised up,” Bree told him. “Not every word coming out of your mouth is golden, after all, Marty. I wish I’d realized that sooner. Maybe then I wouldn’t have let you get away with stripping the heart right out of that last play of mine—you know, the one that was savaged by the critics.”

He actually looked stunned by the accusation. “You’re blaming that fiasco on me?”

She took a second, pretended to give the question some thought, then nodded, “Yes, I believe I am.”

“Don’t you think you’re being incredibly ungrateful?”

“I will be eternally grateful for the opportunity you gave me and for all your help with my writing. You were a real mentor to me, and I learned a lot.”

“Then why have you turned on me?” he asked, looking genuinely bewildered.

She thought about it. “Because you turned on me,” she said at last.

“Turned on you? I just gave you another golden opportunity to come back to work with me.”

“Yes, and I even appreciate that, but we both know it wouldn’t be long before you started picking at everything I do, undermining me. I don’t even think it’s deliberate. It’s just how you are. Constructive criticism is one thing, but you chip away until I question every single word I’ve put on the page. And I’m way too susceptible to your comments. I won’t let you strip me of my confidence again. I’m actually a pretty decent playwright. Even the critics said so.”

“At first,” he reminded her, his tone caustic.

Even when he was trying to lure her back, he couldn’t stop himself from belittling her. If she hadn’t been wise to him now, it would have hurt. As it was, it proved she was making the right decision.

“Marty, let’s stop this. My mind’s made up.”

He looked shocked by her determination.

“Fine. If you want to stay here in the middle of nowhere, be my guest. You’ll never work with me or anyone I know again. I’ll see to that.”

Bree knew his threat should have shaken her. A few weeks ago, it might have, but she had her own plans now. Maybe opening a theater here wasn’t as lofty as working at an established one in Chicago, but it came with plenty of benefits.

She glanced across the lawn and spotted one of them—the man currently standing on the roof of Jess’s inn. Jake’s grim expression told her he was still angry about last night, and not one bit happier about the scene he’d just witnessed, albeit from too far away more than likely to have heard much of what they’d said. Apparently it didn’t matter that she’d told Marty to take a hike for the second time in two days. Even if Jake had overheard her words from that distance, it was doubtful he’d believe them. He certainly hadn’t last night.

And to her deep regret, she had no idea what kind of dramatic gesture it was going to take to convince him.

For days after the scene between Bree and Marty at the inn, Jake couldn’t keep Bree’s voice out of his head. Though she’d tried to keep her voice low, apparently she’d forgotten how well voices carried near the bay. He’d heard everything she’d said to that weasel.

It should have reassured him, but it hadn’t. Oh, she’d said all the right words to send any man with an ounce of pride
fleeing from Chesapeake Shores, but eventually she was going to have second thoughts.

Marty must have sensed that, too. He still hadn’t left town. It looked as if he was planning to stay straight through Thanksgiving, maybe even Christmas if that’s what it took to persuade Bree to leave with him. Obviously he’d considered her latest refusal to be nothing more than a minor setback.

Jake could see the inevitable outcome of all this and knew he couldn’t take losing Bree again. He’d worked hard to avoid her, to keep his heart intact. Ironically, it ached like hell, anyway.

No one else seemed to get why he wasn’t seizing the chance to take her back. He hadn’t been able to escape Connie’s condemning looks. Nor had he missed her frequently muttered remarks about him behaving like an idiot. Even Will and Mack, not the most sensitive guys on earth, seemed to think he was wasting time, when he should have been fighting for the woman he so obviously wanted.

“You can’t leave the field open to that simpering jerk,” Mack told him in disgust.

“But if that’s who Bree wants…”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Will said. “Bree does not want him. She’s all but spelled that out in skywriting over the bay, but he’s too dumb to get the message. Apparently so are you. I’m disappointed in you, pal.”

Jake couldn’t let himself believe any of them. Marty had come here after Bree and was showing so signs of leaving, even after all her insulting remarks. And as far as he could see, she’d done nothing to make him go. He was still ensconced at the inn and spending every spare minute hanging out at Flowers on Main trying to talk Bree into returning to Chicago. One of these days, Jake was pretty sure she was going to say yes, if only to get the man to shut up and stop scaring off the customers.

Connie had reported that half the town was talking about how charming, handsome and sophisticated he was, but the rest—those most loyal to Jake, more than likely—described his presence as annoying. Some had stopped going in there except when they knew Marty would be off the premises. Apparently Jenny had confided in her mother about the town taking sides. His niece had taken sides, too. She wasn’t speaking to him, at least not since she’d told him he was nuts for abandoning Bree when she needed him most.

With business at the nursery in its usual late-fall lull, even with the holiday-decorating sideline beginning to catch on, Jake had way too much time on his hands to think about how everything had gone so terribly wrong practically overnight. In fact, more than once he’d simply stayed home in a funk.

It took him a few days to figure out that his sister was suddenly manufacturing all sorts of last-minute emergencies that required him to personally deliver flowers to Bree’s shop at the end of the day. It wasn’t until Bree herself called him on it during one of Marty’s rare absences that he put the pieces of the scheme together.

“I didn’t order these,” Bree told him, staring at three boxes of long-stemmed yellow roses, which happened to be her favorite flower.

“But Connie said…” he began, then flushed. “What about all those other last-minute orders this week? Did you call them in?”

She shook her head. “They were things I’d ordered, but they were accidentally left off the original delivery. At least that’s what Connie told me.”

“Accidentally, my ass,” Jake muttered. “I’m going to kill my sister.”

Bree’s eyes brightened. “She’s been meddling,” she concluded.

“Apparently so. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. At least she’s kept you from avoiding me completely.” She leveled a heated look at him. “It hasn’t been so bad, has it? Seeing me, I mean.”

It hadn’t been bad at all, at least when Marty hadn’t been sitting there scowling for the duration of the visit. Jake had wanted to be here, with Bree. He’d just been too stubborn and hardheaded to admit it. His sister had known that and given him a push in the direction he’d wanted to go, just the way she had when they were kids and he’d been too scared to make the swing go as high as it could. She’d seized the initiative so he could soar, overcoming his fears. He’d been grateful for that when he was four or five. Now he was a little put out by it.

Even during his sourest mood swings, he could see that he ought to be able to go after what he wanted all by himself. Maybe it was time to have a little faith in Bree’s words. She’d been telling him for a while now that he was the one she wanted. Surely he could take a small leap of faith and give her a chance to prove that she was telling the truth.

“Do you have plans for dinner?” he asked her impulsively. “Can you shake your shadow?”

She frowned at the reference to Marty. “I do whatever I want to do.”

“Then dinner at Brady’s? Just the two of us?”

She kept her tone as casual as his. “Dinner sounds good.”

“I’ll pick you up at the house in an hour. Will that work?”

She nodded.

Jake suddenly felt as awkward as he had the first time he’d asked Bree out way back in junior high. Something about this date felt equally monumental and life changing.

“Okay, later,” he said, backing toward the door. In his haste, he nearly knocked over a column with an elaborate arrangement of Christmas greenery sitting atop it.

“Get a grip,” he muttered to himself as he got into his truck. “This is Bree. She’s here, not in Chicago. That has to mean something. And you’ve known her forever, loved her almost that long. Remember that.”

That, of course, was precisely the point. The roller coaster of their relationship was almost at the top of the steepest hill ever. He had no idea what danger might lurk around the next curve. The track could be smooth…or it could plunge straight downhill.

W
hen Jake and Bree arrived at Brady’s, Kelly took them to a table by the window where the lights that had been strung on the restaurant’s exterior glittered on the choppy water of the bay. Inside, the restaurant was already decked out for Christmas, even though Thanksgiving was two days away. The lighting had been dimmed, candles and small holiday bouquets of holly and evergreens from Flowers on Main decorated every table, and a tree sparkling with colored lights filled the foyer. Bree couldn’t recall it ever looking more romantic.

Bree also wondered about the fact that most of the other tables were empty. The only one occupied besides theirs was at the far end of the room.

“I know it’s almost December, but has business been slow every night?” she asked Kelly with concern.

Between Thanksgiving orders and those for Christmas, business was still booming at Flowers on Main. People were already placing orders for Christmas arrangements and small, decorated tabletop trees for those who no longer wanted or weren’t able to put up huge trees. There were three scheduled for delivery at the nearby nursing home on Monday. She’d actually had calls from a few of the town’s weekenders with
orders for holiday arrangements for their homes in the city. It was hard to imagine that Brady’s wasn’t heavily booked for the holiday season, as well.

Kelly cast a guilty look toward Jake, who shrugged. “Actually we’re closed tonight for a private party,” Kelly finally acknowledged.

“Oh dear, maybe we should go somewhere else,” Bree said.

Kelly turned to Jake again with a meaningful look that aroused Bree’s suspicions. “Do you know something about this?” Bree asked him.

“In fact I do,” Jake admitted. “I booked the whole place. I wanted to be sure we wouldn’t be interrupted by anyone.”

She stared at him incredulously. “You booked the entire restaurant to keep Marty away?”

He nodded. “Seemed wise, given his past history of not knowing where he’s not wanted.”

Kelly beamed at her. “Seemed romantic to me.” She gestured toward the couple in the far corner. “They were the only people I couldn’t reach after you called this afternoon. Since they’re out-of-towners, I figured it would be okay. They’d booked a long time ago. I would have hated to disappoint them.”

“Not a problem,” Jake assured her. “But that’s it, right? No one else is getting in?”

“Not on my watch,” Kelly assured him. “Now that you’re here, I’ll post the Closed For A Private Party sign on the door and get the wine you ordered.”

As Bree settled in her chair, she looked up at Jake. “You’re just full of surprises tonight, aren’t you?”

“I hope so,” he said.

“Does all this mean you finally believe that there’s no way Marty’s going to persuade me to go back to Chicago?”

“I’m trying to.”

Bree didn’t know what else she could do to convince him. “Jake, I’ve done everything I can think of to tell him—and you, for that matter—that there’s not a chance of me going back.”

“And yet he’s still here in town,” he said.

“He’s stubborn, all right. You should know something about that.”

“What I know is that he’d leave if he believed you meant what you’re saying. Obviously he’s getting some signal that he’s getting through to you.”

“I’ve done everything short of driving him to the airport,” she insisted.

“Then drive him to the airport,” he said. “Or I will.”

He looked a little too eager for Bree’s comfort. She didn’t trust that his powers of persuasion would involve diplomacy rather than force. “He’ll leave eventually. He’s not stupid, just persistent.”

“Have you talked to your friend Rebecca recently?” he asked.

She regarded him blankly. “No, why?”

“It occurred to me that maybe he’s really being pressured to bring you back. Could be his career’s on the line if you don’t go. That’s not something he’d ever admit to you, is it?”